The printing press
Movable metal type and a screw press make text cheap, and Europe is never the same.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 15 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Gutenberg combines metal movable type cast to uniform height, oil-based ink and a modified wine press around 1440, completing his Bible by 1455. Movable type existed in China and Korea earlier; what makes the European version explosive is the alphabet's small character set, the casting method, and a commercial book trade. Within fifty years there are printing shops in over 250 European towns and perhaps twenty million books. The Reformation is unthinkable without it.